Lynsey Bilsland, Head of Mental Health Translation

Lynsey is Head of the Mental Health Translation team at Wellcome, which aims to develop a portfolio of funded projects that enable identification, prediction and intervention early in mental health problems.

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The team aims to develop a portfolio to enable identification, prediction and intervention early in mental health problems and maximise its potential for impact on the lives of people living with mental health conditions.

Before joining the Mental Health team, Lynsey was Deputy Head of the Innovations programme team, which provided funding to transform great ideas and discoveries into interventions to treat, prevent and diagnose disease, and have a meaningful impact on patients’ lives. She had strategic oversight of a diverse global healthcare portfolio, including commercial and non-commercial projects, across multiple disease indications, developmental stages and modalities.

Lynsey also developed and led the Innovations Psychosis Flagship, which aimed to reduce the global burden of psychosis by developing innovations to improve diagnosis and monitor disease progression and by developing novel, targeted interventions to ultimately improve outcomes for patients.

Lynsey joined Wellcome in 2009, initially in the Neuroscience and Mental Health team, in the Science division, where her role was to oversee the molecular and cellular neuroscience portfolio, identify and develop strategic funding initiatives and build relationships with stakeholders within UK neuroscience.

Prior to joining Wellcome, Lynsey was a postdoctoral research fellow, funded by the Motor Neuron Disease Association and Cancer Research UK. Her research focussed on developing in vivo imaging methods to evaluate the contribution of defective axonal transport in Motor Neuron Disease pathogenesis.

Lynsey gained her PhD in Neuroscience from University College London and also holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Pharmacology from the University of Glasgow.